New Report Documents Extractive Industries' Payments

Journalists reporting on energy and natural resources just got a new data resource: a report from the U.S. Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI). Want to know what the government gets paid for coal, oil, and mining on federal lands? It has pretty good answers.

The EITI is actually a global initiative. Countries implementing the EITI agree to disclose information on tax payments, licenses, contracts, production, and other things in annual reports. Non-disclosure of such information has led to corruption in some parts of the world. Participation does not yet include all countries.

The latest U.S. reports can give reporters federal resource extraction revenue by location and by company. It also accounts for disbursement of revenues earned by the federal government for extraction.

• "United States Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative: 2015 Executive Summary," Department of Interior, December 2015.